


The Ghosts of Clara Oswald

by spatialvoid



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 13:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1689875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spatialvoid/pseuds/spatialvoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Funny thing, timelines.  Beautiful, complicated, extraordinary</i> traps<i>."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts of Clara Oswald

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes in italics are from _The Book Thief_ by Markus Zusak. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, even if I wish I did. Nor do I own The Book Thief, which is quoted in this work.

_“Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.”_

“Clara Oswald died on Tuesday, 19 November 2076, at the age of 86. Ms. Oswald was born on 23 November 1989, and raised in Blackpool, but moved to Chiswick after her mother died, where she was a nanny for a family friend for two years. After working as a nanny, she was hired as an English teacher at Coal Hill School in the Shoreditch area of London. She continued teaching at Coal Hill for thirty-five years, eventually marrying and having one child. Ms. Oswald travelled a great deal, and was well-known for her poetry that covers topics from ancient history to the splendor of the galaxies. She is survived by her husband, Daniel, her daughter, Eleanor “Ellie” Barbara Chesterton, her grandson, David Ian Chesterton, and no others. A memorial will be held at Graves Cemetery in London on Saturday, 23 November at 12 pm.”

For as long as his respiratory bypass system will allow, the Doctor forgets to breathe. He can only remember ghosts and the life cycle of the earth – the first birth, the final death.

**_To you, I haven’t been born yet, and to you, I’ve been dead one hundred billion years. Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?_ **

**_Yes, I suppose it is._ **

The problem with being a doctor, _the_ Doctor, is this – everyone is dead and always has been, is alive and always will be. Everything ends and nothing ever does.

  


_“It kills me sometimes, how people die.”_

The second time he reads her obituary, he laughs – a cold, harsh, pained laugh. Ellie Chesterton. Time will always have a funny way of going round and round in circles.

  


_“Even death has a heart.”_

He broods for a year or so. The TARDIS broods, and for all her initial hatred of Clara, the ship is more than reluctant to move on. But, as the Doctor has to constantly remind himself, Clara left, left to tell the stories of the infinite versions of her scattered across the universe to her daughter and her grandson and anyone else she felt to be worthy.

And so, eventually, the TARDIS ceases her endless whimpering over the loss of Clara. On board, there grows some semblance of peace, and the Doctor no longer lies awake on the nights he does need sleep, restless at the thought of Clara, out there, alive and dead all at once.

After a while, he sets out for the library, one room that he hasn’t lingered in since before Clara left, finding it three hallways past the swimming pool on the right. This time, it is small, and cozy, and high-tech - you think of the book you would like to read and the TARDIS makes it appear.

The Doctor doesn’t even have to think about which book he desires – the book is already there – sitting on his favorite chair –, dust jacket worn lovingly around the edges. There’s a note tucked neatly inside the front cover. He picks up the book gently, like it is something fragile and precious, opens the front cover, and reads the note.

**To the lonely Time Lord:**

**I thought you might need some ideas of where to go from here. I wish we could have stayed, Doctor, but you, of all people, ought to know that everything ends. You told me that once: “Everything ends, Clara, and sooner than you think.”**

**Don’t be afraid of endings, Doctor. They’re beautiful. My mum and dad’s leaf was my page one. (By the way, I kept the leaf. It’s tucked away carefully in tissue paper in between the pages of my book. It’s going in my memory box when Danny and I get home.) And so, when you are having trouble with my ending, try to remember that I know what my ending is, also, and I’m okay with that. I tell you to run, and to remember.**

**Remember, Doctor. Try to remember. Store all those beautiful nothings and somethings that have happened to you over the centuries in your hearts, until you are full to the brim with joy, and with goodness.**

**I think Danny and I both know, somehow, that you won’t ever visit, at least not for a long while. We’ve resigned ourselves to that sorry fact. But, if you ever want a cup of tea brewed by Clara Oswald or Danny Pink, don’t hesitate to stop in. The TARDIS will always know where we are.**

**This isn’t goodbye – I am out there, everywhere. Within and without.**

**So for now, run, you clever boy, and remember me. Remember us.**

**All my love to space and time,**

**Clara**

He is quiet for a long time after that; his heartbeats echo in his ears, pounding. One-two-three-four. Those heartbeats haunted a man once, drove him mad.

  


_“Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.”_

For a long time after that, it feels as though the ghost of Clara Oswald lingers in the TARDIS. The Doctor turns corners and thinks he catches glimpses of her face, smiling, laughing, frowning. But when he reaches for her, she is no longer there. Nothing but a memory.

On Gallifrey, he was mocked for his love of humans. “Too sentimental,” the Time Lords would say. “He grows far too attached, far too easily, and it’s breaking his hearts.”

The Doctor knows this. After Rose, after Donna, after Susan, and Sarah Jane, and Romana, to name a few out of many, he’d been shattered. But he’d moved forward. They were all happy, and that’s all that mattered. Or dead. Happy or dead.

He keeps seeing Clara in the TARDIS. Sometimes more than one of her, always watching him. He tries to ignore it, and he does, until he can’t any longer.

One day, a ghostly Clara speaks. 

  


_“A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY  
not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children”_

“I’m still here, you silly man,” the ghost says.

He stops, paused in front of the library.

“I’m not a man,” he replies.

“Ah, right, I forgot. Funny thing, being everywhere at once to you – it leaves a lot blurred around the edges. Background information.”

He blinks. She’s still there. “How are you talking to me?”

“I jumped into your timeline, Doctor. I am everywhere to you, all at once. I’m part of the TARDIS now, because the TARDIS is a part of you.”

“So you’re never truly gone?”

“Not until you are.”

“But…” the Doctor pauses. “It would be easier if you were gone.”

“Ah, but then you’d be gone, too. Funny thing, timelines. Beautiful, complicated, extraordinary _traps._ ” She spits out the last word like it tastes sour in her mouth. “We’re tied together, Doctor, connected. Whether we like it or not.”

“How long have you been in my TARDIS?” 

“Past, present, and future. All of your time.”

The Doctor sighs tiredly. “Ah. So there’s no getting rid of you.”

Clara laughs, head tilted back, the lights in the hallway hitting her translucent smile. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

  


_“She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward.”_

For a long time, the Doctor ignores her. Every time he sees her trailing down the corridors, he turns the other way. As a consequence, he gets lost in the TARDIS far more than he had previously, trying to avoid the actual ghost of his past.

But it doesn’t work very well. He finds himself waking up after dreams of Clara, nightmares of Clara. Clara’s phantom hand rests on his shoulder as he tinkers with the TARDIS. Clara brushes up against him when he’s sprinting towards the console room in a rush. Clara talks softly to the TARDIS on those rare nights he tries to sleep. Soon, he cannot remember a time where there was not a phantom Clara behind him.

He makes conversation with her, eventually, things like “could you please move over so I can properly look at that” and “why do you always have to be an opaque filter over everything?”

She never answers, only laughs, head thrown back, teeth glinting, eyes sparkling. (If the eyes of a ghost can sparkle.)

The Doctor goes through dark spells. He’ll find random humans and show them the Milky Way galaxy from a distance and then drop them off right where he picked them up without another word. Over and over again, cold and harsh and terrible. He goes to New Jersey and takes a train to New York, sits in Central Park until Amy and Rory show up, and he watches them, from a distance. He watches them living a happy, normal, life – without him.

Clara is always there, standing behind him, beside him. No one but the Doctor can see her.

  


_“I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.”_

The Doctor wonders, sometimes, why he ever believed Clara to be impossible. He had never encountered a truly impossible thing before her, why should she be the first?

Clara Oswald wasn’t impossible; she was a perfectly ordinary human who happened to have leapt into his timeline in all the right places.

But, then again, no one who stumbles into his life is ever even a little bit ordinary, are they?

  


_“It's a lot easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.”_

They dance around each other for hundreds of years. People come and go – terrible people and beautiful, wonderful people. Stars burn up and stars are born. And the Doctor, the Doctor mourns loss after loss.

Clara does not comfort him. She stands behind him, careful and knowing, while he wipes tears from his eyes and tinkers with the TARDIS console. He does not acknowledge her presence, but the TARDIS knows, and the TARDIS tells her – he is glad she is there.

  


_“You cannot be afraid, Read the book. Smile at it. It's a great book-the greatest book you've ever read.”_

The TARDIS will not tell the Doctor where she is taking him. The time rotor is whirring, spinning furiously, and then the ship drops, lands with a thud.

He opens the doors, cautious and wary.

Outside there is a house in the English countryside, a big old farmhouse with ivy growing all over it and neat, tidy flower gardens.

_Go knock on the door._ The TARDIS nudges gently, and he steps out of the ship and onto the springy ground. The air is warm, filled with the scent of roses, and he can’t help but smile a little.

Clara is beside him, phantom Clara, clinging to his hand.

He walks up the front steps gingerly, as though they may open wide and swallow him whole. They don’t – he lifts the heavy knocker on the front door and knocks once. Not twice, not three times – just once.

“Come in,” a weary sounding male voice shouts from inside, “I’ve been expecting you.”

The Doctor closes his eyes, puts his hand on the doorknob. Twists it, pushes the door open. 

“It’s you,” the man says, and the Doctor opens his eyes. Danny Pink is sitting on the sofa in the front room, feet propped up on the coffee table, newspaper in his lap. He looks old. Well, older than the Doctor looks, at any rate.

“Oh,” the Doctor says softly. “OH.”

“I wondered if you’d ever show up,” Danny says. “Clara, she waited a long time for you. Always said we should make enough supper for you, if you ever came by.”

“Clara,” the Doctor breathes, “Danny, where’s Clara?”

Danny smiles sadly, as though he’s sorry about something. “Clara’s dead.”

The Doctor’s eyes widen. “But I thought… the TARDIS… wouldn’t.”

“Doctor,” Danny says gently, “you were there.”

“Was it… was it over with quickly?” The Doctor asks.

“As quick as old age gets,” Danny says with a pained laugh. “It’s been some five years, Doctor. It’s all right. I’ll be gone soon enough.”

“And…”

“And you’ll keep on living, Doc, just like you always do.” Danny smiles. “Keep your chin up, pal – it gets better from here on out.”

  


_“As always, one of her books was next to her.”_

Clara is lying in bed, old and worn but still sparkling, when the Doctor steps into her house again. Her hair is white and fragile, her smile just as glowing as it was when she was twenty-five. 

“I thought you just might stop by today,” Clara says when she sees him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

The Doctor sits down in the chair next to her bed and sets his hand over hers gently. “Did I ever stop by?”

Clara smiles sadly. “No.”

“Are you… are you angry?” 

“Didn’t you read my letter?”

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Then you should know,” she answers gently.

“You’re not angry,” he says carefully.

“Far from it.”  She pauses, and the pause is heavy. “But I’m dying.”

“I know,” The Doctor says softly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she replies calmly. “I’ll just keep going on and on, Doctor. It gets all jumbled up in my head now – which days I lived, and which days the all the other versions of me did.”

“Which day was your favorite?” he asks quietly. 

“The day I met you,” she whispers, squeezing his hand. “The very first day.  I remember the very first thing I said to you….”

“Ah, hello! I can’t find the internet.” The Doctor laughs.

“Thank you,” Clara says softly. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome, dear soul.”

“I left you a gift,” she whispers.

“Hm, I know,” he replies.

“You do?” She asks, her eyebrows shooting up. “How?”

“I’ve already found it, Clara.”

“I’ve already died.”

He nods hesitantly. “Yes.”

“I know, Doctor. I’ve died so many times, it’s no surprise that this me would drift gently away just like the others.”

“And phantom Clara…” he pauses, unsure. 

“Phantom Clara is this Clara, Doctor,” she says, squeezing his hand. “I’m not going to die, not properly. The TARDIS showed me.”

“I know,” he replies. “You’re there, all the time now.”

“Am I?” Clara laughs. “I’d hoped so. Am I just like I used to be?”

“No,” the Doctor says, “You’re different. Harsher. More watchful.”

“I was always harsh and watchful,” she says. “You just never noticed before.”

“Maybe I didn’t notice a lot of things,” he mutters. 

“Maybe you didn’t,” Clara says, looking at him, smiling. “But that doesn’t change the goodness of everything we did.”

  


_“A small fact: You are going to die....does this worry you?”_

She dies that night, holding the Doctor’s hand in one of hers and Danny’s hand in the other. The Doctor sheds quiet tears, helps Danny and Eleanor make funeral arrangements, and then steps out quietly into the night.  ** _It’s better this way,_** he tells himself.

Phantom Clara is waiting for him in the TARDIS when he walks back in. 

“You’re back,” she says softly.

“I can’t believe she’s dead,” he replies angrily. “The TARDIS should have stopped this. The TARDIS should have saved her.”

“And the TARDIS could have saved me, Doctor,” Phantom Clara states bluntly. “But I didn’t want her to.”

“Why not?” The Doctor shouts. “ _Why not?_ ”

“You spent so much time trying to find something inhuman, something impossible, about me, Doctor,” she begins, and then pauses contemplatively. “I had hoped… I hoped that maybe my death would remind you that even the people you think are extraordinary are still humans.”

“Everything ends,” he whispers.

“Everything ends,” she repeats firmly.

“But you…” he falters. “You’re Clara.”

She looks at him imploringly.

“You’re not Clara?” He asks, and wishes he hadn’t.

“I’m a shadow of myself, Doctor. I am all the parts of myself that watched over you.”

“But you were always watching over me.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Phantom Clara says. “You only had me for ten years of my life, Doctor, and I lived for nearly eighty-seven. I saved you, but I did not devote myself to you. I had a mother and a father and a husband and a daughter. You were not my world, you foolish man.”

“I’m not a man,” the Doctor mutters. 

“What are you, then?” She asks.  “Are you a Time Lord or a human, Doctor? It’s time to make up your mind.”

“I’m neither,” the Doctor states. “I’m the Doctor. I am everything and I am nothing.”

“And so you must know that humans are not everything and they are not nothing. That’s why they fascinate you so – because they have attained something you never can.”

“And what is that?”

“Impermanence, Doctor. The ability to be and not to be.”

“That is the question,” he says softly, looking through Clara’s eyes.

“You always are there, my lonely lord of time,” she says lovingly. “And you must use that for good, and never evil.”

“I’ll try,” he says, flipping levers on the TARDIS console.

“I will always be here, with you,” she replies, smiling. 

“I’m glad.”

  


_“I am haunted by humans.”_

For hundreds of years, Clara stays with him. They travel together, they save the world together – the lonely Time Lord and the ghost of a human woman. 

And then, one day, she is gone.

It’s no surprise, really – he doesn’t need her anymore. The Valeyard has come and gone, the Oncoming Storm settled to a gentle thundershower.

He thinks maybe she has drifted away into a corner of the TARDIS, or maybe found a way to disappear entirely. But, at any rate, he has finally become what he calls himself – a Doctor: a caretaker, a healer, and a protector of the universe.


End file.
